Hotel to pay compo to waiter who quit over row about not getting tips worth thousands
The waiter said customers were generous with tips and that if he had been allowed to keep them he would have made more than he earned in his weekly wages
A hotel has been ordered to pay €7,000 in compensation to a former waiter who quit his job in a dispute over the failure to pay him tips received from customers.
The Workplace Relations Commission ruled that the hotel, which is based in the midlands, had unfairly dismissed the waiter and failed to pay him tips he had earned.
The WRC heard the waiter had started working in the restaurant of the hotel in March 2023 which was very busy and served up to 200 people most days.
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The waiter said customers were generous with tips and that if he had been allowed to keep them, he would have made more than he earned in his weekly wages. However, he said he was instructed to hand over all tips received in cash. The waiter said he was threatened by his general manager that he would only be rostered for one or two hours work a week after he made a written complaint to a HR manager about not getting paid his tips.
The WRC heard that the general manager also threatened to dismiss him. Danny Ryan BL, counsel for the hotel, which was not identified in the WRC ruling as the complaint was made under the Industrial Relations Act, said he would not respond to the waiter’s claims
The waiter said he was given €49 in tips and another €100 a few weeks later after making the complaint but they represented just a small fraction of the thousands of euros he had received in tips. The waiter outlined how he had asked for a statement from his employer about the amount of tips received in the restaurant after he got advice from the Department of Enterprise and Employment over how tips should be distributed to staff.
The complainant said his life at work was made intolerable by “a very abusive manager.” He claimed he was suspended from work when a manager informed him that she felt unsafe working in the same premises as him and that he had her phone number and that she felt unsafe at home.
The waiter said she had given him her phone number but he did not know where she lived and did not want to know. He claimed the manager’s speculation that he wanted to cause her harm was “untrue and baseless” and that he reported the matter to gardaí.
The waiter said he believed his suspension was another form of abuse which was intended to get him to resign which he eventually did in July 2023 as his wages had been stopped. WRC adjudication officer, Catherine Byrne, noted legislation was enacted on December 1, 2022 which gave employees legal entitlement to a share of tips paid in electronic form.
However, the legislation does not regulate how cash tips are distributed. Ms Byrne also highlighted that the legislation requires employers to display notices which state whether or not tips are distributed to staff.
She said the hotel had produced no information to indicate if it displayed such a notice in its restaurant and that it had not contradicted the waiter’s version of events. The WRC calculated that it was reasonable to assume that he earned around €500 per week in tips on tops of his average weekly salary of €500.
It estimated that he would have received around €8,000 in tips during the time working in the hotel in 2023. Based on the practice that tips are shared with kitchen staff, it calculated that he would have taken home around €5,000 in tips.
Ms Byrne said she accepted the waiter had to leave his job and that it was reasonable for him to look for other employment when his wages were stopped after he had been suspended for making a complaint.
While he could have raised a grievance before resigning, Ms Byrne said his efforts would have met with little success given how he was treated when he made the complaint about the distribution of tips. The WRC awarded him €7,000 in compensation for his unfair dismissal and the hotel’s failure to pay him the tips he had earned.
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